January 15, 2010

"... the most obvious way that's left would seem to be this: a Senator bails (Nelson, most obviously) or if Coakley is defeated they just can't pass the bill before Brown takes her place. (Darn!) Any House-Senate compromise is thereby doomed by the lack of a 60th vote--the only hope becomesg [sic] getting the House to pass the Senate bill word-for-word (the Sudden Victory strategy). But just enough House liberals declare they can't stomach the Senate bill--on the grounds that the uncompromised Cadillac tax is unacceptable, perhaps, or the subsidies are too low, or that a public option is essential. Presto, a train wreck."

57 comments:

Frankly, the Health Care demolition and rebuild bill is not the target anymore. It is only a needed marker of Obama's continuing powers needed to expand upon what his EPA appointee did to clear the decks for Obama's Scam Of the Century and bullet to the heart of the USA: the CO2 is pollution fantasy.

The union deal makes the health care bill so peverse that if it passes, the bill is going to be a dog on democrats for years to come. Democrats are giving 15% of Americans a special deal that the rest of us will pay for. That is totally disgusting. It makes Ben Nelson's bribe look like childs play.

DEms better hope Brown wins, otherwise the health care bill will be a sore they will never be able to escape from.

...or if Coakley is defeated they just can't pass the bill before Brown takes her place. (Darn!)

The Dems have threatened to delay certifying Brown (obviously, if he wins) until after they vote on health care. A fly in that ointment, however, is "how many Dems would grab the Brown lifeline and work behind the scenes to delay the vote until after Brown is sworn in." Might make for a very amusing tug of war.

The accepted wisdom of the Pundits is that if Obamacare/Reidcare passes now, the Democrats will recover in time for November's elections.

But the pundits are wrong. While it is true the nation may eventually learn to live with Government-run Healthcare, 10 months is far too short a time for the nation's anger and disappointment at the Democrat's running roughshod over the American people to produce this debacle.

I say let it pass and absolutely guarantee a Republican House and diminished Democrat Senate. That will prevent the lesser angels and extremists in the Obama administration from making a bigger mess of the economy and our national social fabric.

If Brown wins, it will be the effective end of the Obama Presidency exactly one year after it began. The party hacks and the media who are too dumb to know any better will talk a good game about this being about Coakley being a nitwit. But the politicians will know better. Normally, the Dems could run a drunken homeless man and hold Ted Kennedy's old seat. Indeed, they kind of did during the last few of Teddy's elections.

This election will send every Dem in Congress into full survival mode. It will be every Congress critter for himself. They will bail on Obamacare first. The once Brown is seated, they will no longer have a super majority and be able to tell their base, "we would have like to have done cap and theft but the evil Republicans stopped us". Obama will have to get Republican support to pass anything. He won't be able to claim "I won" and demand things. That is clearly beyond his meager abilities. His agenda will dead.

"Nothing the Dems have ever proposed, and certainly not now, is "government run" health care. Where do you guys get this shit from?"

That is true. Government run health care would be better. Yeah, it would be horrible and cause untold misery. But at least it would be misery spread equally. Obama care is nothing but a giant theft program for Dem interest groups. Everyone else ends up miserable and poor without even the security a socialized system would provide.

when the government requires from employers that they insure their employees OR pay a fine for not doing so, and then a government sponsored exchange is picks up the slack, how is that not governmemt run?

Oh, I get it - the Post Office isn't government-run technically either is it (wink, wink)?

I think garage was actually being reasonable. The delay for Franken was certifying the election, not swearing him in. And it was a close election that took recounts, so that makes sense. I don't think anyone claims Franken was treated unfairly.

The accepted wisdom of the Pundits is that if Obamacare/Reidcare passes now, the Democrats will recover in time for November's elections. But the pundits are wrong. I say let it pass and absolutely guarantee a Republican House and diminished Democrat Senate.

That would win the battle but lose the war.

You have to understand that ObamaCare is the tool to secure a Leftist Democrat majority for generations. Thats why they are so brazen and corrupt in their attempts to get it passed.

You can see the preview in the UK. The right-wing is boxed in: instead of promoting Liberty for their people, they have been reduced to debating how thick the iron collar of government dependancy should be.

You've seen what the Democrat Left has done to the African-American community over the last 50 years.

John - No he wasn't. He was implying symmetry. He was implying that the Republicans had delayed certifying Franken, so it is only fair for the Democrats to do it in MA. No other reading of his comment makes sense.

Nothing the Dems have ever proposed, and certainly not now, is "government run" health care. Where do you guys get this shit from?

The difficulty is in what is meant by "government run." Under the bills in the House and the Senate, decisions about coverage are going to be made by the government. The details of what must be covered by a plan and what cost sharing levels are permitted are set out in some detail by the bills, with provisions for much more specific regulation of the minimum coverage to be set out by an advisory commission. Simultaneously, the bills provide for guaranteed issue, regardless of pre-existing condition, which creates an automatic disincentive against any coverage beyond the government-specified minimum -- if a plan were to provide broader coverage, it would tend to be more expensive, which would in turn mean that people will just sit in the less expensive plans until they have need of expanded coverage, and jump to the expanded coverage plan once they get sick. So either the expanded coverage plan will have to raise its premiums substantially (in which case it will lose customers, and its remaining customers will all be sick, and paying pretty much the cost of their treatment) or just go out of business. So the government-specified minimum coverage is likely to be the only coverage, given the perverse incentives arising out of the intersection between the minimum coverage regulation and the guaranteed issue. Furthermore, the bill also restricts the medical loss ratio (i.e. the insurer's profits).

The government may not directly be providing the health services at issue, so it's not like this is National Health. But under the bills, the government is injected so directly into the operations of the health care markets that the bill can fairly be characterised as an effort to assert government control over health care. Or more directly, they introduce "government run" health care (at least in the states that haven't already put in half of this junk).

"Your level of health care will be entirely dependent on how politically connected you are."

Of course it would. You apparently didn't get my post at all. That is exactly what Obamacare would do. And that is exactly why it is not socialism in any ordinary meaning of the term. It is just banana republic kleptocracy. As horrible as the UK and Canadian systems are, and they are horrible, I would take them over Obamacare.

John - No he wasn't. He was implying symmetry. He was implying that the Republicans had delayed certifying Franken, so it is only fair for the Democrats to do it in MA. No other reading of his comment makes sense.

Agreed. Garage's values are typcial of the Left:

He knows A did something corrupt.He believes B did something equally corruptHe excuses A because he believes B did it to.

This also explains how they telegraph their next Hate - you can always expect the Left to do what they just accused the Right of doing:

The Left wants to do violence to conservatives, soThe Left pretends conservatives have been doing violence to the Left.The Left gets excused for their violence because "boths side are guilty"

You may remember that they employed this when people started protesting against Dems and Obama. The protesters were condemned as violent extremists, shortly before SEUI and MoveOn thugs moved in to beat down people and bite off fingers.

The pretty much project the worst of themselves on their opponents. They assumed George Bush was using the NSA and the Patriot Act to spy on his political enemies because that is exactly what they would do if they had the power.

I'd use the analogy that Health care and the health insurance industry will be turned into public utilties.

On your observation:

So either the expanded coverage plan will have to raise its premiums substantially (in which case it will lose customers, and its remaining customers will all be sick, and paying pretty much the cost of their treatment) or just go out of business.

Further, community pricing rules will take most of the actuarial science out of risk/premium setting equation, so that there will be a much tighter grouping of premiums between the young healthy memebers of a particular policy group and the older/sicker members.

Elections are important, but there is more than one way to implement an agenda, and Obama is doing it through regulations and through the Porkulus.

He is a smart socialist, not a hippie. He has been dumping millions into free food and free housing in CA for the last year. He is building a permanent and dependent lower class, just like the Chavistas. An electoral loss here and there is not important to him.

The accepted wisdom of the Pundits is that if Obamacare/Reidcare passes now, the Democrats will recover in time for November's elections.

Speaking as someone in "the business" the ever present anger out there is "the hassle factor" (i.e. insurance denials, waiting room delays waiting to confirm eligibility etc.) The admin and Congress will now state "we fixed healthcare" but tomorrow and for the foreseeable future those hassles will remain...

And so a likely response from the "frustrated public" will be They didn't fix healthcare they f'd healthcare

I'm not trying to pick a partisan fight it. It just seems the Dems don't realize what they've stepped into. (Especially since in the short run NOTHING WILL CHANGE)

C3 said...And so a likely response from the "frustrated public" will be They didn't fix healthcare they f'd healthcare

wait till the 4 years of taxes and regulations kick in before the benefits start. Folks will love that part. The only thing that balances the 10 forecast is 10 years of taxes paid out in the last 6 years.

Over at "Point of Order" Michael Stern suggests that Senate precedents read the 17th Amend. to have interim Sen. Kirk's term expire on the Jan. 19th special election date, not the date of any certification of any successor. If such a point of order would be sustained, any Conference compromise bill on health care could surmount a new Senate filibuster only after Coakley was both elected and then ertified. Until then, without Kirk's vote barred after Jan. 19, there would not apparently be the 60 votes needed for cloture.

They'll use that as an argument for "finishing the job" (i.e. full-blown government take over).And it should be said that if the Republicans regain "power" they will be expected to "fix the fix". The same dangers exist.

Was Coleman a Republican? Other Republicans didn't help Coleman, at all? Coleman paid all the legal fees himself? The NRSC didn't contribute 5 million to Coleman? Of course Republicans helped delay seating Franken.

So garage if Brown is ahead by 50,000 votes on Tuesday night and Coakley concedes and the Democrats wait three months to swear Brown in, that is the same thing as Coleman and Franken spending months contesting an election where neither side conceded and the vote differential was less than a thousand votes? The situations are not analogous and you know it.

Or maybe you don't. I often accuse you and Jeramey of being stupid. I do so because you seem utterly incapable of making a coherent argument. Instead you just relay on ad homonym and false metaphors. The more I think about it, that may not be your fault. I really think liberals have lost the ability to make cogent arguments. They live in a world where everyone agrees with them. I wouldn't be surprised if among the people you associate with, arguments like "republicans just don't like Coakley because she is a Democrat" (forgetting her bad habit of framing innocent people as DA) or "they delayed Franken we can delay Brown" (forgetting that the two situation may not be in any way analogous) pass a serious thought. And probably have passed your entire life. I doubt anyone has ever explained to you basic logic or how to make a cogent argument. It is not that you are stupid. It is that you just that you don't know any better, which is really kind of sad.

If enacted in the dead of a January night, it will be repealed before it can screw the Americans who want to work for a living.

Funny thing about repealing something like this is that there will be something left behind. It won't be as easy as returning to the current state. Someone will compromise something and the government will still have its fingers in.

Sloanasaurus is right, the Dems better hope Brown wins or someone flips. Obamacare will bury them next fall if it passes. Union agreement or no, it's a big crap sandwich that will stick to the roof of voters mouths.

Unfortunately, if the bill does die, many independents will return to their normal lives and much of the public anger will be diffused.

For instance. The Obama car czar shut down 700 or so car dealers. That pissed off about 250,000 voters or more. The bank bailouts, the climate bill attempt, the Olympics bid, the 21 Congress critters who wen to the Copenhagen climate thingy. And the Spendulus Bill which had little impact on jobs or on Main Street.

AJ, almost all of the visceral anger I have heard on display at town hall meetings has been focused on healthcare. That's because it directly effects everyone.

I hope your right about the accumulation of additional outrage but I have my doubts. I think the stimulus would be the Democrat’s next biggest weakness but there will be mucho bucks spent on defense. Come next fall, many of the other issues you mentioned will either be old news or fly under the radar of the average Joe/Jane Sixpack. I think the outcome will depend mostly on whether the Democrats continue to overreach.